


Young Leaves

by sloppy



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-15 00:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7197083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloppy/pseuds/sloppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had always been his responsibility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not even half an hour after being sworn-in as Captain of the Imperial Guard, Joo-Doh manages to create another job for himself when he fusses over a little lord and a littler princess who really ought to have more supervision than they actually do.

As he prepared in the morning, Joo-Doh had made the fatal mistake of forgetting to fasten the last latch that held up his chest-piece, and so he was made to suffer through the whole hour-long swearing-in ceremony fearing his armor would collapse around his feet in front of the emperor.

Now that it was over and he no longer had to stand General Guen-Tae’s smarmy smirks amidst the crowd, he could finally readjust the stubborn armor behind an outdoor hallway pillar before his reception. Though he had insisted against one, Kuuto would not be Kuuto if it did not throw its gaudy celebrations for seemingly all reasons to no reasons at all.

Satisfied with hearing the latch click into place, Joo-Doh began walking towards the great hall when he happened to pass a bush that spoke.

“It’s Mister Joo-Doh!” said the foliage, trying to whisper.

“Grumpy Joo-Doh! He won’t find us, will he?”

Joo-Doh sighed, flexed his gauntlets, and pushed away the branches revealing two very small children in the finest silk robes now decorated in dirt and twigs. He felt a headache stirring immediately at the sight.

“Your Highness, my lord, you are not allowed to be here,” he said, trying hard not to be too gruff or stiff or mean for the children’s sake.

The youngest of the two had the biggest eyes—although both had eyes like marble saucers—and had learned to use them to her advantage as soon as she could toddle. Princess Yona pouted, saying, “We were only playing.”

It was only because he had faced that weapon for so long Joo-Doh could withstand the manipulation.

“Lord Soo-Won,” he addressed the older one, “I’m sure your father is awaiting your arrival at the reception and the emperor, his daughter.”

The young lord simply smiled. “Of course. We can go with you. Congratulations on becoming Captain, Mister Joo-Doh.”

Resigned to their loss of freedom, Princess Yona stretched out both her arms, a gesture that demanded she be carried and which no one was spared. Joo-Doh complied and held her up, already exhausted from the single minute they had spent together.

Yona leaned against him, her fluffy hair almost stuffing his mouth, and asked, “Do you get a ship? Like in the stories?”

“Joo-Doh isn’t a captain of the seas,” explained Soo-Won patiently, climbing over the short wall that bordered the hallway to where Joo-Doh stood. “He’s Captain of the Imperial Guard’s first squad. He makes sure you and your father stay safe.”

“Oh, okay,” said the small princess. She stifled a yawn and poked the scar on Joo-Doh’s face, still healing from the most recent and rarest wave of foreign assassins that never made it past the border he had been guarding. “Thank you for protecting us, Joo-Doh.”

His demeanor softened. “You are welcome, Princess.”

“When I grow up, I’m going to learn how to fight with a sword so I can protect you like you protect me!”

Oh, no. “Your Highness—”

“I’ll protect Papa, too, and Soo-Won, and even Hak who’s mean to me! I’ll get strong and protect everyone!”

“Princess, your father would never allow—”

“I’m sure you will, Yona,” Soo-Won said sweetly, his words overlapping the older man’s blatant objection. “Isn’t it nice that she wants to protect us, _Captain_ Joo-Doh?”

If his voice wasn’t so slathered in honey, it would have been obvious the underlying intent bordered on threatening, but this was a child—a lord, no less! Joo-Doh was beginning to imagine things, most likely from the pronounced stress of the day. No eight year old boy could seem so calculating.

“… I suppose,” he muttered, then readdressed, much more formally, “Thank you for your hard work, Your Highness. I will rely on you in the future.”

The little princess beamed at the thought of being depended on. She clutched at his neck a little tighter in excitement, allowing him to feel the twigs in her hair scrape against his neck and the astronomically high body heat of a tiny child. Joo-Doh held in a long sigh as he thought of how he would explain to the emperor how it got into his six year old daughter’s head that she would able to protect the entire nation by herself.

He offered his hand to the young lord absentmindedly, precautions against further wandering, and it was taken. The boy’s hand was warm and sticky from the weather, but Joo-Doh paid no mind and continued, telling them both: “However, I will do my best to ensure you—nor anyone in your family—has to raise a single finger in order to protect your subjects. That is my duty.”

Soo-Won and Yona looked up at him with an expression close to admiration, and Joo-Doh, bettered by it, felt himself flush embarrassingly.

“Now, I’m sure your parents are looking for you. Let’s attend to the… reception.” _His reception_. He couldn’t help the sliver of jadedness slip out.

Exchanging a look, the cousins said in unison, “No.”

Yona said, “Play with us, Joo-Doh! Hide-and-seek!”

“We were playing it before when you found us but we didn’t have anyone to seek,” tacked on Soo-Won, unhelpfully.

“I love hide-and-seek ‘cause Hak plays with me when Soo-Won isn’t here and Soo-Won plays with me when Hak isn’t here and we all play together when we’re all together but there’s no one to play with when I’m by myself! Except that one time I hide-and-seeked by myself but Yellow Dragon big brother said I couldn’t do that alone anymore after I finded the stone room where Mister Red Dragon sleeps and I was really scared but Yellow Dragon big brother said I was brave and Papa doesn’t move me when I sleep on his bed because I’m so tired from playing and he lets me sleep with him just like Soo-Won does! It’s really fun!”

“What,” said Joo-Doh, only registering the _Yellow Dragon_ portion of the rambling, just as the royal cousins commanded once again, “Play with us!”

That was how Captain Joo-Doh of the Imperial Guard found himself skipping his swear-in reception, digging through rose bushes and peering up trees and glancing inside empty storage rooms—all because once again he was bested by children. This time he let out the impending sigh.

At least they were his favorite children.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Princess Yona went missing, and nobody knew.

Two days after the emperor’s wife was killed and the emperor locked himself in his room, Princess Yona went missing.

The uproar in the castle over the death mirrored the outcry in Kouka, for Her Majesty was loved greatly all around. Around the premises, security tightened tenfold around their emperor and the generals called a summit, generating a buzz and frenzying the servants. Her Majesty’s ladies-in-waiting dressed in black garbs and the Princess’s nurses mourned in their quarters, each thinking the other to be the one to look after their charge, when in fact neither did. With General Yu-Hon at the border concerning flimsy treaty relations and his son at home with his bed-ridden mother, there was no one to consider the daughter outside of fleeting thoughts and condolences.

It was like this: Princess Yona went missing, and nobody knew.

Nobody, that was, until Joo-Doh, tasked with strengthening the army recruits through rigorous routines, discovered a familiar little girl rummaging through trunks in the armory in an sleeping gown with unbrushed hair.

“Princess Yona,” said the captain, still sweating from training and only intending to return the cache of wooden swords they used for sparring. He placed down the weapons and readied for a scolding. “You should not be here. Who is to look after you?”

She didn’t reply, but her cheeks blew up in frustration. Tears formed like pearls in her eyes. Joo-Doh assessed the situation; she was kneeling in front of an opened trunk that, in her position, towered over her form, and was seemingly filled with steel swords of varying lengths. They sparkled cold silver from the evening sunlight that peeked from the door he had come through, and otherwise the room was completely dark. Any other time Princess Yona would have cried aloud at being left in a place like this. This, apparently, was not just any other time.

He repeated, “You should not be here, especially alone.” When he saw her face, he was struck with a sense of unease. How did he not see before that she shared her mother’s lips, her button nose? “What—”

“Sow—ry,” she blubbered, slurring unintentionally, already with a wet face. “I made Joo-Doh mad, too. Yona is a bad girl?”

“I am not mad.” He gentled his tone and kneeled before her. “Why do you apologize?”

Princess Yona gripped the front of her skirts. She whispered, quivering, “I made Papa mad.”

He tried to imagine the emperor thus. He failed. “How so?”

“Mama’s dead ‘cause I couldn’t protect her, like I said,” Yona said through sniffles. Her confession should have been expected, but it only weighed upon Joo-Doh, heavy as a ton of stone. “Papa’s mad that Yona is weak and he doesn’t want to come outside and see me. So Yona has to get strong to protect him and that’s why I gotta be where the swords are, to get strong, but all the swords are really heavy and big and they hurt me.”

She upturned her palms and Joo-Doh was horrified to see bright red bruises and scrapes against the starkness of baby skin. He held her much smaller hands in his own, very careful of her wounds, and commanded, “We must disinfect this at once. You are forbidden here, Princess, it is much too dangerous.”

Instead of thrashing and complaining, Yona took a few deep breaths and leaned her soft head on his lap, as he was still kneeing. She would resemble her mother, when she grew older, inheriting her wit and passion. Joo-Doh could see it blooming in her now.

Comforted by the feeling of being held, it was then did the girl begin to sob—for her father, for her mother, for the pain she felt at that moment; an uncontrollable sound that hammered his consciousness and would haunt him in his sleep. Joo-Doh leveled his breathing and grieved in silence. The sun behind them set.

It was like this: Princess Yona went missing, and then she was found.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mama once said the heavens cried rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally for AkaYona Ladies Week Prompt #1: Beginnings, but I threw in Joo-Doh at the end just so I could update this.

Mama once said the heavens cry rain. When the sky turns grey and the clouds get soapy, it is because the gods are prepared to mourn.

It’s hard to count raindrops. They all fall too fast. Just now Mama says to lie down, but the space is tight and Yona can only twist so much before she’s tugging at the long dress pinched between her leg and a plank of wood, catching mud the way Yona knows the her favorite nurse hates.

“Mama, I can’t count,” she informs her mother, who is lying beside her, breathing hard enough Yona can feel the heat brush her neck. “I can’t see. It’s dark.”

“Shh, darling,” says Mama. “Please, darling.”

“It’s dark, Mama.” Yona doesn’t understand where the horses went—the ones her pudgy little hands had pet before they pulleyed, two swarthy, healthy things with strong names she can’t remember. She careens her head to the only crack of light in the dark, but for some reason the puddles outside are red. Red like the hair on her head. In a much softer voice, she asks, “Mama?”

This time there is no reply. Perhaps, thinks Yona, she has fallen asleep. The carriage had bumped and bumped until it flipped over and Mama had her eyes closed then as well, though her arms were tight around Yona in a hard embrace.

What her mother hears that her daughter doesn’t is the footsteps outside, the clang of swords, the falling of familiar bodies. What her daughter hears is the rain, and her mother praying to gods who cannot answer.

Yona squirms around until she is facing Mama, and she can see her still mouthing words in quiet. Her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world with her long lashes and full lips and pretty face. Even with her fringes dipped in red. Maybe even more so. Yona reaches out to touch it but doesn’t get her chance. Mama opens her eyes, mirror images of her own.

“Yona,” she says, and it isn’t a whisper anymore. “Not even the gods can rival my love, though they may try. I will always love you, my little dawn.”

Her affection is a lullaby that rocks Yona to sleep even as outside the storm rages, and when she awakes, the steady arms of Captain Joo-Doh holds her close. There is a red burst of liquid from his cheek, newly fresh. This is not the first time she has seen it, but it is the first time she has been gifted its name.

“It is called blood,” Captain Joo-Doh tells her. This is the least of what she learns that day.


End file.
